Parents Gone Wild: What I Learned at BabyFEST

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They were crawling everywhere. Squirming in their seats, drooling on their shirts. Peeing in their pants. Babies. Scores and scores of little people. Sort of cute, mostly terrifying.

Especially when you consider how something so small and powerless can alter the texture of a man's life like nothing else in the world. That human babies are actually the strongest creatures on earth. And I was surrounded by them.

It was my own fault. I'd come here voluntarily, to the first ever Brooklyn BabyFEST, in the borough's Williamsburg neighborhood, where bearded fathers and tattooed mothers with strollers are a common sight — but not so ubiquitous that they can't be ignored. There was no ignoring them at BabyFEST. I'd come out of an inexplicable curiosity, to see what I could learn for when the time came to obliterate my easy bachelor lifestyle and have some young'uns of my own. The event was also literally down the street from my apartment. My girlfriend was nice enough to come with me.

The assault began as soon as we walked in the exhibition hall and encountered a life-size painting of a woman down on all fours, straddling a blanket in the middle of a field while a baby fell out of her. Another painting showed a mother embracing her newborn, the thing's bloody umbilical cord hanging from its body. There was a musical performance by the "kindie rock" band Little Rock-its (no relation). We waked by a class about sign language for babies who can't yet speak. The instructor explained how you should always pay very careful attention to a baby's hand gestures, because it might be trying to tell you something. Something most likely related to eating or pooping. Panic began to rise. I looked at the exit and considered using it. My girlfriend, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the scene. She laughed at some toddlers impersonating the sign-language instructor. She took my hand and told me to relax, as she often does.

The first booth we stopped at offered body painting for pregnant women. Because why just do a maternity photo shoot when you can get some angelic scene airbrushed over your stomach first? It cost $350 for the painting and photo session (more for the actual prints), and one popular design was a sleeping baby in the womb, painted over the actual sleeping baby in the womb. Sort of like X-ray vision into the uterus. Because that's not creepy at all.

The next booth was stocked with medical literature and a razor-sharp saleswoman for ViaCord, a service that collects and freezes umbilical cord blood stem cells. The idea is that they can be later transplanted into the child to treat an ever-growing list of illnesses. ViaCord boasts an "88% 1-year-survival" rate. It costs more than $2,000 for the blood banking, close to $3,000 if you want to include cord tissue along with the cord blood, and another $125 per year for storage (there was a discount if we enrolled right on the spot at BabyFEST). To hear the saleswoman tell it, only the most callous parent would forgo ViaCord, and we might be condemning our baby to an early grave if we were too cheap to cough up the three grand.

As she spoke, I realized my girlfriend and I were not just everyday marketing targets; we were the demographic: a young couple apparently expecting their first child and about to be thrust into a whole new landscape of consumer goods and services. The exhibitors could smell the bewilderment on us, and it smelled like money. (My girlfriend is not actually pregnant, has no plans to be any time soon, and her flat belly is one of the things I find most sexy about her. But at BabyFEST, the assumption is that anyone not carrying a baby in their arms must have one in the oven.)

My stress kicked up another notch as we tried samples of handmade organic baby food packaged within 24 hours of home delivery. We talked to a service that collects, dries, and encapsulates the post-birth placenta for a new mother's easy snacking. We were told that in Jamaica, the whole family enjoys chowing down on the placenta.

"You have a special dress for prom, for your wedding, for every one of life's big events," said the saleswoman at the Active Labor Gown booth. "But not for the most important and most photographed event of your life."

I didn't realize women were photographed more during childbirth than at their wedding, but never mind that. What we needed was this "revolutionary performance fabric" gown, complete with a side opening for fetal monitoring chords. There was an opening in the front for giving birth, and one in the back, the saleswoman explained, "for easy toileting."

And that was my breaking point. I could deal with sign language for babies. I could see how having chubby cherubs painted on your pregnant belly might be fun. I could even see the value of freezing cord blood. But there was no way I could handle "toilet" being used as a verb.

I stumbled right out of the first annual Brooklyn BabyFEST like a toddler who has just learned to walk. I stood outside, gulping in the sunshine, wondering which direction to run. Then a crew of hungover hipsters shuffled by. They talked of bands I would never listen to and parties I no longer had any interest in. For me that time has passed. At 35, I was well past the age when most American men start being a father and nearing the age when many New Yorkers do. It was almost time to stop running.

So I turned around, went back into the BabyFEST, and took a seat at the "All About Dad" panel discussion, where I was able to ask the only real question that had been on my mind all day: Why in the hell would any sane man ever want to be a father?

"Being a father is the most transformative experience you can imagine," said one. "It forces you to confront parts of yourself you might never otherwise. It makes you want to be the best possible version of yourself."

"It instantly creates love," said another, who went on to explain that even though he might get in trouble for saying so, the love he feels for his children is even stronger than what he feels towards his wife.

I chatted with the fathers after the panel. One guy had plenty of money, but opted not to freeze his daughter's cord blood, or commission a still-life portrait of her delivery. His wife had given birth in an old-fashioned hospital gown, and still managed to toilet effectively. In fact, all the fathers agreed that absolutely none of the goods and services being hawked so passionately in next room were really necessary. That all it took to have a happy child was commitment and love, and that the love part kind of took care of itself in some mystical way that would be corny to describe but not to experience.

Maybe I just wanted to believe them. Maybe it was just what I needed to hear. But I've been a journalist long enough to know when someone is full of it. And these guys weren't. They really liked being dads. It gave me hope that maybe I would, too. If nothing else, I've always been a fan of powerful transformative experiences.

There was a post-panel raffle drawing, and I'm happy to announce that the next person to invite me to a baby shower will receive a gift of a new designer baby backpack from Patunia Pickle Bottom, complete with a monogrammed plastic wipes case. My girlfriend returned from the prenatal discussion she'd attended while I was finding Zen with the dads. Her earlier calm had vaporized somewhere between the part about the 4,000 diapers a baby will use in the first year and all the other women offering her congratulations on her nonexistent pregnancy.

"What's our birth plan?" she wanted to know. "We need to have a birth plan!"

"What's a birth plan?" I asked.

"It's how we want to deliver our baby."

"Oh, in a hospital?" I tried.

The look on her face drove home the fact that no matter how stressful this whole baby experience might be for a father, it will never compare to what a mother goes through.

"Are we going to have a doula?" she wanted to know.

"What's a doula?" I asked, not sure I would like the answer, but, thanks to the Brooklyn BabyFEST, no longer afraid to ask the question.